Huynh Thanh

TIPS FOR TEACHERS OF EFIC

CLASSES AT CENLET LANGUAGE CENTRE

Having worked as a teacher of EFIC (English For International Communication) classes for over five years, I would like to share a number of tips in hope of making EFIC classes in our centre more and more interesting and successful.

1. Conduct a survey to get to know the learners’ needs and expectations at the beginning of the course. This takes only a few minutes in class but you can’t imagine how helpful it is. The survey’s result shows us what kinds of activities our students are most interested in, what language skills the y would like to improve. Once you’ve  learnt all about the learners’ expectations, you will be on the right track of teaching.

2. Don’t get worried when the EFIC class learners seem unresponsive at first

Vietnamese students are used to participatory classrooms with plenty of teacher’s talking time. In most language classes, students are often trained to be silent, good listeners, and memorizers. Therefore, it is predictable to see students keeping on listening to you and saying nothing at the beginning of the EFIC course. In this case, you should not get panic but try to make good use of a variety of communicative techniques to make them talk. You should be the lighter to give light to a lot of potentially good candles. I am sure you’ll be surprised at how your students will change.

I myself used to make a silly mistake of asking 17-year- old students to debate the benifits of educating children at home. After I gave the topic, a long silence fell over the classroom because the young learners had no interest in it. Similarly, when you have nuns or monks in your class, the topic of love or marriage is not suitable at all. So when  you’re conducting a classroom debate, remember that the topic should be suitable for the learners’ age, interest, sex and background knowledge.

4. Present a rationale for what you do in class

It is advisable for you to lead to the topic of the lesson in a smooth, interesting way. The students should know what they are going to learn right at the beginning of the lesson. Experience shows me that my students will conform much more eagerly to new classroom content and procedures if they understand the benefits.

5. Make good adaptation of the learning materials

All the coursebooks in use in our EFIC classes are interesting enough ; yet the teacher should adapt the content so that it will meet our student’s needs and interest. Let me take the topic of food in Smart Choice coursebook for example. Almost all of the dishes mentioned in Unit 5 in the book are new to Vietnamese learners; so instead of talking about sandwich, saussage, McDonalds, hamburger, we have our students talk about the specialities in Hue. Some time-consuming, lengthy and rather complicated activities in the course book should be cut short and simplified to be suitable for our teaching time and students’ interest.

6. Consult Mr. San, our deputy director, for good advice and abundant teaching materials

When talking about the materials for EFIC classes, it would be remiss not to mention Mr. San, who has been devoting most of his time to the development of EFIC classes. If you really need help on your teaching at EFIC classes, don’t hesitate to ask our “supervisor” to visit your class and then you will surely get very good comments and advice from him. Furthermore, in case you run out of materials to teach these classes, he will be always willing to give you heaps of hard-to-put-down books.

7. Remember your students’ names and create a friendly learning environment

It’s wise to remember your students’ names with the help of a class seat plan designed by the class monitor. It is far better to address your student by her/his name than just saying “you”. The learners feel good when their names are called and so, the relationship between the teacher and students gets closer over time. Sometimes, just a regard of the learner’s health can possibly make her/him remember us for long.

8. Make your own teaching materials to encourage your students to take part in speaking and listening activities

Three things that are irreplaceable in an EFIC class are cue cards, pictures and pairwork sheets. Cue cards are small, squared, cotton cards on which there are words or pictures aimed for speaking activities. Pictures, which can be taken from your house, bookstore or even from the internet, are of big help for both listening and speaking activities. Pairwork sheets should be used to revise or practise a grammar topic you have taught. Pairwork sheets are two lists of questions on two separate sheets. Each student has one but cannot look at their partner’s sheet. Students ask and answer the questions, using the grammatical points they have just learnt.